Blizzard on Paragon 2.0 and Loot Upgrades in D3X

Lylirra used her Twitter feed to reply to a few tweets with useful infos on Followers, Paragon 2.0 changes, the likelihood that all current loot will be junk in D3X, and more. Good infos galore:

just 3 simple qns. hope You can reply to it 🙂 1. Any new followers? 2. followers new max lvl = 70? 3. any unique follower items? 1) No new followers; we’re expanding the stories of the existing ones, though. Time to learn more about Covetous Shen! 2) I believe followers will have a new level cap, too. Don’t think it’s 70; will have to double-check. 3) None that I know of any off-hand, but our designers are still in the process of creating lots of items. So, TBD! —Lylirra

Big pic from inside Blizzard’s Gamescom pavilion.

What happens to our current ilvl 63 gear, the new ilvl is 73 I assume? They essentially become worthless when RoS comes out. Prices tend to fluctuate, sure. In terms of power, tho, gear shouldn’t become worthless overnight to your heroes. –LylirraI just don’t like the WoW Exp ilvl jump where you replace so fast. Will existing legendaries roll 67-70 like they roll 60-63 now? Definitely a different situation than WoW. Or should be! Still lots of testing to do. 🙂 –Lylirra

what do you think about most of our current gear we are having atm will they be vendor trash after loot 2.0 ? not sure what to do. Vendor trash? Hmm, probably not. (You’re thinking of what happens w/WoW expacs?) It’s possible you’ll find upgrades via drops, tho. –LylirraWhat happens to our current ilvl 63 gear, the new ilvl is 73 I assume? They essentially become worthless when RoS comes out. There will be a new iLvl, yes (because that makes the most sense w/raising the lvl cap). Currently, it’s 70, tho, not 73. –Lylirra

Ty for all the D3 info. Seen nothing on MP (Monster Power) levels. Will they also be infinite like paragon levels? No plans to have infinite MP. —Lylirra

will the new paragon system count the dead HC characters in hall of the dead heroes toward the account total of paragon levels? Still TBD. 🙂 Expect a full write-up/cover of the Paragon 2.0 system in the future. –Lylirra

Female crusader looks like Buffy. Totally playing her to 60 before anything else. Crusaders have a pretty dark (or “Spartan,” as Kevin Marten calls it) sense of humor, too. Very Buffy-like indeed! –Lylirra

Could you please confirm that a decimal will be added for items we are adding to auction house or trade window in game? We indeed have plans to add commas in the Trade and Auction House UI.–Lylirra

The issue of current loot becoming useless in Reaper of Souls has come up quite a bit lately in comments and the forum, and it’s a reasonable fear. Reasonable since it’s almost certain to come true, as that’s how things go in expansions to loot-based RPGs. All current gear won’t become worthless at once, but it seems pretty likely that after a month or two most players will have upgraded a lot of their gear from level 60-63 quality up to level 70. I certainly hope so at least; level 70 monsters should be a lot tougher than level 63 enemies, and should drop and require better gear to defeat.

Whether that means you should sell off all your best gear now and sit on the gold for D3X upgrades is a question worthy of debate. I’m not going to since I play and enjoy the game daily and we’ve got a long time to wait. That said, if you’ve got spare billion-value gear, you might want to start doing some liquidation while the market still values D3C gear…. and mental prepare yourself for some frantic item finding/farming once D3X hits.

I remember spending hours running up and down the stairway in Act 4 when D2X was new, trying to get the NPC merchants to spawn Cruel Elite weapons, since good blue weapons of Elite quality did far better damage than anything left over from D2C. (Those items were very quickly outdone by found gear, but you needed the bigger damage to survive in Hell to find the new, bigger weapons — bit like D3C’s early Inferno “gear check,” in retrospect.)

The potential of an ilvl jump (and resultant gear reset a la wow) was a HUUUUUGE factor in me not grinding paragon levels nor loot farming in D3C. Far too many experiences were gear resets in WoW to trust the devs with not doing the same thing with Diablo 3.

Lylirra is TRYING to convey a message that its not a concern. But when she hedges her bets with phrases like “still lots of testing to do” and “shouldn’t becomes worthless overnight”.

I hear THAT and my brain translates it into “it will become worthless in a month for casual players, 2 weeks for regular players, and if you are an elite player, it might become worthless overnight or in a day or two.”

So all that work grinding and item hunting D3C will be for NOTHING. They are going to erase it with a higher ilvl in D3X.

Of course, it begs the question…why on Earth would you grind, or farm “loot run” mode for months and months in D3X….when you KNOW that come D3X2, ALL of that work gets wiped and you start fresh AGAIN??

In D2, it actually makes sense to grind a lot….because the loot ISN’T erased. A lot of D2 players consider their nonladder account their primary account, and they play ladder seasons to build up gear for the nonladder account as all loot gets moved by Blizz to nonladder when the season ends. You should try logging into softcore nonladder D2…the place can be very very busy with tons of games. There is no threat of a higher ilvl in D2. Loot actually has permanence in D2, but a lot of people may not realize that.

I dont get it…Isnt it also a good thing ? Dont you want better and cooler items ? You farm/grind/buy items now to become strong now, just because as soon as ‘loot 2.0’ arives, ur equips wont become useless, maybe wont be worth the money anymore, sure, but thats the evolution, if there is something better, thank god there will be, ur trash will be..trash.

What did you expect ? Do you actualy rather no better items ? Just increasing the drop rate to be able to pick the same trash we all got bored with ?

The items you got will work for now and will help you killing fast enough to grab the new ones, you wont need to pay to have them, so the items you got right now, assuming they are good, wont be useless since they’ll help you achiev the next upgrade.

People are just used to having the same items for 8 years or so in D2 because they never updated the game, I’m sure if they could have added more items, they would have, but most everyone had left by then. Or they like to pretend the new items in D2X just never happened. At some point in that game, your bad ass rare Javelin from D2C was replaced with Demon Arch/Titan’s Revenge.

Another situation where Blizzard are given a no-win scenario form their fans. Make loot better! Don’t replace my loot! Where is the new loot? Improve the game! Stop adding new things! I think if you really don’t want to grind in D3 anymore, you probably don’t want to play the game, period.

No it is not a good thing. I don’t want to be on a loot treadmill. I want a sense of permanence. I want to feel like I’m building towards something instead of getting forcibly reset every 2-3 years.

I suppose you could strike some sort of Grand Bargain. Maybe for those that played x number of hours of D3C / reached x DPS in D3C / acquired best in slot (or near best in slot) in x number of slots in D3C…..these players get some sort of permanent, one time reward as we reset the loot table in the move to D3X. That way, the people who put in time on the endless grind get something permanent, and everyone still gets gear upgrades to better shinies.

I think, in this case, since you are erasing their progress with D3X, it would have to be an item reward that boosts MF, gold find, xp gain, something along those lines. It should be more than cosmetic. It should give a permanent edge to grinding. Now people feel truly rewarded for all that time they put into D3C.

I also want to point out that I did lots of PvP in vanilla WoW, during the honor grind years. I hit rank 14. They ripped the honor grind out the game and replaced it with arenas. The thing was, they grandfathered everyone into their PvP titles. That was super cool. I would constantly get comments in future years whenever I walked around with my High Warlord title. It just wasn’t seen much . People knew you could play.

If someone hits Paragon 100 in D3C, they should get a permanent reward too.

Disclaimer: I only played about 70-80 hours of D3C. I am not in line for any such reward. But those they reached certain levels of achievement ought to get it.

I agree with giving rewards off the current paragon level you gained, that might be nice. The grandfathered WoW pvp titles you mention would be akin to having the paragon level 1-100 avatar visualisations become unobtainable after the paragon 2.0 hits.

Because as I’ve predicted before, paragon 1-100 is going to be a lot easier to obtain after the expansion to level out magic find in order to properly launch loot 2.0. And paragon 101+ will without a doubt not provide MF bonusses anymore.

Having the items themselves become obsolete after an expansion or even patch on the other hand, is going to happen without exception in any loot-based game. Any game in the genre would be worse off without freshly improved items, and Diablo 3 specifically has a terrible loot system as it is right now that desperately needs to be reset.

I agree with giving rewards off the current paragon level you gained, that might be nice. The grandfathered WoW pvp titles you mention would be akin to having the paragon level 1-100 avatar visualisations become unobtainable after the paragon 2.0 hits.

Because as I’ve predicted before, paragon 1-100 is going to be a lot easier to obtain after the expansion to level out magic find in order to properly launch loot 2.0. And paragon 101+ will without a doubt not provide MF bonusses anymore.

Having the items themselves become obsolete after an expansion or even patch on the other hand, is going to happen without exception in any loot-based game. Any game in the genre would be worse off without freshly improved items, and Diablo 3 specifically has a terrible loot system as it is right now that desperately needs to be reset.

@ I hear THAT and my brain translates it into “it will become worthless in a month for casual players, 2 weeks for regular players, and if you are an elite player, it might become worthless overnight or in a day or two.”

“So all that work grinding and item hunting D3C will be for NOTHING. ”

no, because while you grinding for items you were also gaining Paragon levels. And now in the expansion those Paragon levels apply to EVERY ONE of your characters, not just the one who was dong the grinding, so you actually come out ahead.

The ENTIRE argument about current items becoming useless is bizarre.

“I hear THAT and my brain translates it into ‘it will become worthless in a month for casual players, 2 weeks for regular players, and if you are an elite player, it might become worthless overnight or in a day or two.'”

How is that any different from now ?

Every player has out leveled 99.99% of the all the items they have picked up along the way.

Are people bitching that the awesome ilevel 20 item they found 40 levels ago is now worthless for their level 60 character ? No.

Really, its just a bizarre complaint. Duh, hey Blizzard, could you please keep the level cap at 60 so my items don’t become useless.

You might as well stop playing at the end of Normal mode and never progress into Nightmare because you don’t want your awesome level 25 gear to become worthless.

Haha, Lyllira trying in every possible way to say loot will be replaced without actually saying it. It’s like, let’s cross that bridge when we get there guys, save me the head ache until then.

I don’t have problem with grinding new loot out, I just don’t get as attached, and considering half the game is getting loot, it’s hard to continue that when all the new items are made null and void. I think people like Fizzo are making a mountain out of a molehill here. D2X replaced A LOT of items for a lot of people, (elite uniques/RW) the game survived it shockingly.

What I hope is that these new items are worth grinding for to begin with, and that new systems are added which make gear customization more interesting, itemization is made more varied with less CC/CD. They can replace my gear all the way, just make sure it’s fun.

I’ve never been more disappointing in a CM then I have been Lyllira, out of all the CM’s I’ve ever seen come and go from Blizzard (Remember Eyonix?) by far she has to be the worst and least passionate of the lot. Sometimes I wonder why she was even hired to be a manager for a gaming community in the first place. She’s not even much of a gamer, her twitter and personality says she’s just in it for the job and probably likes the people she works with. But as far as an awesome, passionate community manager she fails completely. She just regurgitates the same PR crap every time, useless information, and links to what the Devs have already said.

I doubt she was doing cow, baal, and mephisto runs in Diablo 2. I doubt she even participated in the WarCraft 3 ladder back in its prime and I bet she never even felt the same magic that we felt from StarCraft or WarCraft when She’s hot, that’s about it.we played them for the first time.

You preferred Bashiok? Or you’re holding all D3 CMs up to some Platonic ideal that has never and most likely will never exist? And in your theorizing are you factoring in reality, i.e. a CM for Blizzard being the front PR person for a massive global game developer with innumerable political issues to factor into their every fan interaction?

I wonder if people are thinking of this all wrong. I think MP level has to be taken into account. Inferno was beatable with non godly gear. The gear I have now that lets me play MP5 is is far above what I needed to beat inferno for the first time.

I would expect that if I wanted to beat act 5 on MP5, then surely I would need some upgrades. I wonder though if I couldn’t beat act5 on MP0 or MP1 with my existing gear. Surely people who are on MP10 could?

So I doubt the gear will be “worthless”. Of course they will be raising the godly level to new heights and you may have to lower your MP level for a while.

On the other hand, I remember my WoW days. A new expansion would drop a blue item in the first 15 minutes that replaced your best raid gear. And ya, I remember vendoring my tier set items pretty quickly. (tho I think I banked them for a bit just for nostalgia)

Oh well, I guess if people really fear this, then not playing is something they should do until expansion.

I’ll put up a vote next week on this (and several other things) since it seems to be a topic of resistance to some. I’d personally be hugely disappointed in an expansion that didn’t add new gear of higher quality, new monsters of higher difficulty, new procs and bonus effects on items, etc.

It’s weird for me to even think of it from the “nothing should ever change to devalue my current gear” PoV, but apparently some people are really in that place. And a vote to measure how many people feel each way should shed some light on the issue.

I could think of two logical reasons to progress ilvls in the expansion: – One is to further raise stat values/ranges. – The other is to introduce new high-end exclusive affixes.

It doesn’t really make sense to introduce ilvl 70 items when these don’t offer any advantage over ilvl 63 items, does it? Other than for new graphics maybe, but not with transmog coming (and that one is already set in stone as they will sell cosmetic items through that system as they do in WoW now).

It doesn’t make much sense either to have ilvl 70 items offer even more affix slots, as these already are a key-part in the whole randomization failure they devised.

Another reason that wouldn’t make much sense either was to raise the item quality towards ilvl 70, with rares becoming the blues, legendaries the new rares and an even higher quality tier being introduced to the game: that just doesn’t sound very Blizzard-like, though it might be a smoother, somewhat more elegant approach towards solving the current item situation.

In any case, other than providing new art or different (not better) affixes for ilvl 70 items, there’s no reason why they would raise ilvls. There can be no denying that an upcoming power gain will gradually make current items worth less (though not ‘worthless’ as the CM correctly insists) and that’s ok because that’s the whole point of progression. Nobody guaranteed those people who spent actual money on AH items that those will forever remain the top-tier gear, anyway.

However, what annoys me greatly about the CM’s statements is, that everyone knows that within an evening/weekend/week after release, you will have most of your gear replaced by higher ilvl items, and they keep playing that one down. “You might replace a former high-end item (that you worked on forever to acquire) by new random (junk) gear every now and then maybe” is what they keep telling their players since WoW: Burning Crusade with every expansion. They know better than that. That may just be lying to the costumers as every company does in WoW where ‘gameplay power’ cannot (yet) be purchased through real money. With the same young audiences PLUS the RMAH involved, I’d consider that demeanor highly reprehensible, though.

It’s ironic. When I was playing WoW vanilla and the burning crusade was about to come out, the WoW players familiar with loot-based games, e.g. Diablo 2 players, would laugh at the silly WoW players being shocked and angry that their items were about to become (predictably) obsolete. Yet here we are, years later, and the Diablo 3 players are shocked and angry at the rumour that their items are going to be obsolete in a year. Heh.

I think the problem behind the problem here is that it’s another step away from what so many of us loved about D2. I really want all my gear to become obsolete every xpack ala WoW, but it’s also frustrating that the system from D2 worked just fine as far as I was ever concerned. Maybe if they hadn’t botched things so badly this wouldn’t bug me as much, but it’s hard not to take it as just another kick in the nuts while they move further away from D2.

Ironically, some sort of reset needs to happen because clearly itemization is still completely bitched. Increasing iLvl is the easiest way to do that, although without resetting the gold/economy along with it, I’m not really sure that’s any sort of permanent fix (new servers with only new characters and no AH would be the fix).

I dunno, so many core systems and features are messed up that trying to fix one just leads to further breakage of the others. What a mess.

Did people *really* think their gear and the game would be the same forever? Every RPG expansion introduces new, harder content and items to match. I guess someone might have never played or heard of such things pre-D3, but I find it hard to believe. Possibly Bliz is bringing this on themselves a bit by not regularly introducing new better quality gear in patches?

The time and/or money people spent on their gear was the fun it gave them playing with it. Saying it’s worthless unless it stays the same forever is like saying the time/money a person spends gardening is wasted, since the plants are just going to keep growing or die off. Or that it’s pointless to get a haircut since you’ll just need another one in a month or two.

Many/most things in life change over time, and yet we have no objection to spending money or effort to enjoy them at one moment in their ongoing evolution. Not sure that Diablo 3 should be the exception to that rule.

I certainly didnt think our gear would stay the same forever. but its also a big reason why i call both d3c and d3x BETAs. d3x2 is the actual release. i do think that game will be good. a part of that is because gear sets should be finalized with no more iteration. i dont think resetting gear is just a normal part of rpgs. its just laziness.

I don’t really understand why they do not just put the expansion characters in a new league. It creates a new economy and gets rid of all these discussions. They could also safely get rid of the RMAH that way and they don’t have to balance a game with 5 acts also for people that do not buy the expansion.

You may reason that you lose all progress with your ‘vanilla’ characters, but that is not really true, you can still just play vanilla 😉

Why is everyone worried about their current gear? Reading between the lines there is going to be a ladder mode and we won’t be able to use our current gear anyways. You know everyone will want to play ladder because they will have ladder exclusives and all the peeps eat that up.

We saw the SS of the gear… obviously the new gear eclipses anything in the game. The problem is compounded by d3 bad itemization and damage system and loot 2.0 isn’t going to fix the horrid damage system even IF they actually do a good job on the loot. It’s an awful system where anything you find in nightmare or hell is just pure trash in inferno. They really fucked up with the loot system and itemization 2.0 isn’t addressing it, just tweaking and adjusting the current “iteration.”

When i first arrived to inferno i farm there with some nighmare and early hell gear, because usable loot just didn’t drop, or if it did, just rolled so poorly that it weren’t an upgrade. At least i’m hoping they’re trying to fix that with the new loot2.0.

By the way they could elimanted the problem that you mentioned, by making some gear scale with player level, now that max level is 70 and with it monster and item level is 70 too.

Raising ilvl is the perfect way to nerf stuff like crit without taking peoples current gear away from them. For example you could keep using your current high crit gear if you wanted, but you would lose out on all other stats – making it the wrong choice. If they nerfed crit that is, obviously remains to be seen.

Gear resets are needed and healthy for a game. Inflation is inevitable, and gear resets keep people playing. Keeping people playing is critical to a multiplayer game. Now, the inflation rate in D3 is terrible b/c of the stupid, myopic decision to ignore binding and making crafting competitive (the two main gear sinks in the game). But even if you did everything right, inflation is non-zero. You just need to buy enough time to work on an expansion to reset the gear.

Now, the WoW paradigm in and of itself isn’t so bad, but the implementation is a little wonky. Item levels (and hence, stats) jump up dramatically at each expansion. So much so that the current expac, your average glass cannon has over 375K health points. The growth curves are linear, then grow exponentially at the high end (to make BiS gear really pop). Of course, doing this over four expansions means that there’s a big exponential swing at the end. Blizzard is trying to corral the problem (nicknamed the Great Item Squish), but players are already complaining.

What does this mean for D3? In the WoW model, a level 64 blue (or character level 61) could be better than Skorn, Manticore, Ice Climbers, Witching Hour, etc. That’s pretty insane. Level 70 legendaries and rares should definitely be better than level 60, but in WoW, the regular leveling up trash gear was better than 40 man raid gear at level 60. That would be bad in D3. That said, they need a complete overhaul of the gear stats and the math underneath. D3 already has a terrible exponential math problem, and it hasn’t even had one expansion. It’s like the designers never took calculus and had to look at derivatives. It would become obvious that you can’t make the base damage stats so non-linear. Watch your growth curves, you hacks!

If blizzard, according to the interview with Josh are considering a beta this year already i am thinking the beginning of 2014 or around summer. I am pretty sure it won´t be 2015, because they might lose too many players till then.

And the award of most dumb question goes to “What happens to our current ilvl 63 gear, the new ilvl is 73 I assume? They essentially become worthless when RoS comes out.” Of course they will become worthless, since new ilvl will be added to game with higher stat rolls.

People are just used to having the same items for 8 years or so in D2 because they never updated the game, I'm sure if they could have added more items, they would have, but most everyone had left by then. Or they like to pretend the new items in D2X just never happened. At some point in that game, your bad *** rare Javelin from D2C was replaced with Demon Arch/Titan's Revenge.
Another situation where Blizzard are given a no-win scenario form their fans. Make loot better! Don't replace my loot! Where is the new loot? Improve the game! Stop adding new things! I think if you really don't want to grind in D3 anymore, you probably don't want to play the game, period.

Exactly. Remember when the Heart of the Oak runeword came out? Lol.

Man people who invested in the rmah must really feel screwed lol

Was thinking the same. I've built my gear up through finding stuff and GAH. If I'd spent a real $100 on current BiS stuff...
I think Blizzard just kneecapped the RMAH. Interesting!

Look, this is the problem. I just want a completed game released in a decent amount of time, with no xpacs, file wipes, etc. Just make a good game!

Blizzard whiteboards a complete game, then breaks it up into 3 pieces and sells them as xpacs over a period of 8 years. And you guys seem HAPPY with this plan…

What if Nintendo decided to break the Ocarina of Time up into 3 games. They release the first dungeons you run as a child as vanilla in 1998. Then 3 years later in 2001, they release half the adult dungeons. Then 4 years after that, they release the last half of the adult dungeons and the Ganon fight in 2005.

Would that make you HAPPY? Would you be like oh boy new content yay! Meanwhile, the entire game was done in 1998. The difference is it takes 7 years to release it all, and instead of charging you $60, they charge you $180 in 3 $60 installments.

Why are you cheering this on? Why do you like this crappy state of the video game industry? I just don’t understand. I’m just gonna sit it out until D3X2 is released. Everything they do vindicates my decision.

So you’re saying you’re against xpacs in general? That once a game is released they should never again add new content to it? That’s a pretty weird stance but I guess if that’s how you feel, um, more power to you?

Does anyone here SERIOUSLY believe that it takes, what, EIGHT YEARS to create a PVP system??? They started work on D3 in, what, 2010? Released it without PvP in 2012. They said it would be a DISASTER if PvP wasn’t out in 2012. Well they gave us brawling in 2013. We still don’t have a true PVP system. And there’s no mention of it for D3X.

I have to GUESS they won’t add it until D3X2 when that comes out in 2017-2018. So you’re left with two choices:

1. PvP is an INCREDIBLY difficult system to design and it takes almost a decade to create it. 2. Blizzard has basically become a subpar gaming company that is too lazy to add PvP.

-PvP can actually be difficult to implement properly without breaking PvE. That’s why WoW had entirely different stats and gear for PvP. I’m not saying that a better version shouldn’t be in the game already, but i doubt it’s nearly as easy as you think.

-Of course the old items are going to be outdated when an expansion comes out. The same thing happened with D2 just in a slightly different manner. If Blizzard *didn’t* create a bunch of new, more powerful items everyone would be clamoring that there’s no reason to buy the xpac. Games like this always have expansions over a period of several years, and these expansions always introduce better items. I honestly don’t know why you wouldn’t expect this.

-I think it’s funny to read comments like “i did all of this grinding for NOTHING!” No you didn’t. You did all of that grinding to find better items… and when the xpac comes out you will still be grinding to find better items. What’s the difference? If you don’t enjoy that, don’t play.

QUOTE=edistotiger;8553555] -I think it’s funny to read comments like “i did all of thisSpoiler alert: all the RoS items will be junk when the next expac comes out too.

-I think it's funny to read comments like "i did all of this grinding for NOTHING!" No you didn't. You did all of that grinding to find better items... and when the xpac comes out you will still be grinding to find better items. What's the difference? If you don't enjoy that, don't play.

Presumably they had fun, which is the main value. Other than locally saved Median mod stuff 90% of my D2 characters are dust on the digital wind. I guess all my D2 playtime was for nothing by the same logic.

Raising ilvl is the perfect way to nerf stuff like crit without taking peoples current gear away from them.
For example you could keep using your current high crit gear if you wanted, but you would lose out on all other stats - making it the wrong choice. If they nerfed crit that is, obviously remains to be seen.

This is being very wise, The God bestows a minor blessing upon freman ShadoutMapes. Expansion is/was a perfect time to break trifecta-omnipotence or limit it without endless complaints, and also re-calculate max dps values to meaningful numbers and rebalance whole monster system accordingly.

I, Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, The God, states that this is not going to happen, based on information given. Even the Goblin Ring is now trifecta-friendly, and components of trifecta are supposedly built-in ‘Sharagon’ system, for imbalance pleasure – The God declares that if trifecta indeed becomes part of ‘Sharagon’ leveling this means game will be dumbed down to the lowest of the depths of stupidity.

Back on topics, the divine being states that new items are doomed (blessed?) to be superior to old ones, for following reasons: – itemization was bad in the first place, request for change were endless, now they are here, expect the changes, don’t expect painless ones – though you could expect unsatisfactory ones (from all points of view) – having same ‘limits’ on gear viable means either new act is of completely same difficulty as previous, or that all monsters are rebalance backwards to fit the existing limits, while maintaining current ruling items rule once more – the same thing happened in d2 – it is natural that wanting new content has drawback (for heavenly being, they are meaningless), like having to regear and ‘respec’

Walk in a park with uber-gear already possessed is not a good recipe for increasing game lifetime.

Go tell the mountain ———————

Unhappy that your uber-gear (often paid substantially) won’t be viable at all in xpac? Go complain the Blizzard! Out of several damage determined mechanisms, they chosen most primitive one and implemented it in all skills/runes. Xpac’s are most vulnerable to this specific method, and now you’ll feel the wrath of incompetence! Divine being gives some, but not all, reasons while D2 to LoD transfer was less painful (though The God made new character and restarted game immediately). Typical types of damage are: – a skill point invested – this does not hurts +3 to Bone Spear item even a bit, even when limit is increased. Better weapon is needed, but it ends there for melee characters, and doesn’t even come to this for casters – a weapon-independent – see above, and remember that those are always viable, regardless of… anything – not influenced by IAS, or with fixed criticals (d2 model) – keeping usefulness longer – character-level based – just keep on rolling with increased levels

With the right distribution, instead putting all plebeian eggs in one dps-related basket, the change could be less painful, but still comprehensive and needed. The divine being understands pain of RMAH people, though it doesn’t share it in terms of money-being-wasted meaning.

Note on D2 – much of new-itemization-making-existing-items-worthless was caused by ‘flaws’ (not so big ones) in initial game – most prominent being lack of tiers for items. Now, we have all learned something from that, and avoided it happening in the future? No, there is a small group of people who doesn’t seem to understand that.

CMs and fond rememberance ——————————

I, Tiberius Claudius Caesar Augustus Germanicus, The God, approves someone remembers Bashiok in a way he deserved! Current CMs team, in divine impeccable judgment, serves exactly zero purpose. Whether Blizzard with releasing low-grade product is cause of that, or pure meaningless of having them is responsible, is up to debate.

ALL CMs basically are banned to say anything of value – collective sum of data ‘revealed’ by CMs is equaling zero (a number divine being still having trouble with!) – all information are basically hidden under two-sizes-fits-all answer “we thought/discussed that on a meetings” and “I-cannot-tell-anything-except-it’s-being-worked-on-and-it’s-going-to-be-awesome”. All (partial) information shared so rarely came from devs themselves.

So, CMs are in an ugly spot – hostile environment, comprehensive evidence-based post with astounding number of points ‘against’ current systems that can’t be defended – well, perhaps some with deep inner understanding of the game could, but not them.

Note on CMs – they are all rather young and not overly paid, also lacking in experience. They probably expected something else from this job, instead being in hopeless defense of game criticized constantly, by raging plebeian-kids without arguments and old ‘sharks’ who know exactly what they talk about. They cannot counter or reverse or even reduce the tension on forum – divine being states that they just given up and are focusing on citing the devs and frequently comment ‘d3 prettiest flower – which one you would have at home?’ type of threads – basically least hostile ones.

All of that is no excuse for not learning something about the game – plenty of threads regarding that, counter threads, facts…

The God on announcement —————————- The God refrains from commenting changes – there are too few for any definite conclusion, new ones are released daily and crucial thing – “when, for D3 vanilla” isn’t remotely answered – between now and more than a year. So far, nothing really promising and guaranteed to be good – for example, skills? Never once mentioned! Heavenly being will refrain of commenting something vague on long stick…

I think it’s fairly obvious. The problem is the level cap. Of course items will become useless. That’s the reason unique items were always so good because they weren’t a top level item, but they could still be BIS because of their stats.

I’m fine with gear getting better. It gives us something to hunt. Also, the loot grinding isn’t useless because the better the gear you have once D3X is released the easier the time you’ll have going through it. Loot will be expensive when D3X is released, so it’ll be hard to find upgrades.

I also disagree with something I read earlier. Someone doing MP10 right now will not walk through Act 5. I think they’ll make Act 5 pretty tough (something like the earlier Inferno days) and then nerf it after a few months.